Rumors: Force Touch on Next Apple iPhone (You Don’t Say?)

To the surprise of no one who takes an active interest in Apple’s products, Bloomberg is reporting that the next iteration of Apple’s iPhone (presumably to be designated the iPhone 6S/iPhone 6S Plus) will feature Force Touch.

Force Touch isn’t the name of TLC’s next reality freakshow — rather, Force Touch is Apple’s new user interface that adds new input options the harder a user pushes on a touchpad or touchscreen. Press down hard on an Apple Watch, for example, and you’ll be able to change the face. Do the same on a new MacBook Pro or a new retina MacBook and you’ll call up the definition of a word or increase the fast forward speed in Quicktime.

Does Apple like Force Touch? You bet. It’s on all their new devices and for Apple watchers, Force Touch not being on the next iPhone would be a real surprise.

In addition, Force Touch also uses haptic feedback — while it feels like you’re pushing down on something, you are, in fact, feeling the feedback of a vibrator (or as Apple calls it, a “taptic engine”).

Other rumors speculate that the addition of Force Touch will mean a slightly thicker iPhone by 0.2 millimeters and that the company will share using 7000-series aluminum with the Apple Watch Sport for its unibody construction.